Collaboration Nation

Change. It jingles in your pocket everywhere you go. When you get enough of it, you slip it in the slit and receive your delicious and never nutritious candy bar. This entry is not about that kind of change. The change I am going to talk about is the powerful word we commonly hear in this day and age. We seek it, we elect officials we feel can bring it, but what if I told you that drastic change has already occurred beneath our fingertips? Still don’t know exactly what I’m talking about? It’s about free knowledge, collaboration, and the way businesses are creating business. It is all changing, and for those businesses who are not adapting are kind of SOL…

So what does this all mean? It means small businesses and individuals have more say in how things go down in this economic society. We are starting to encourage individualism by emphasizing collaboration. If that doesn’t make sense, let me break it down. People are coming together for a common goal. The individuals involved are not required to contribute, but through voluntary action, they are bringing their strengths to the table for the group as a whole to reach that common goal. What’s best? Everyone gains the benefits!!

That’s not the only benefit. There is also no talk about a hierarchy of power. The control is either dismissed or dispersed among the members. Let’s face it. Old school businesses use to be run with intimidation, controlling leaders, a small number of members collaborating, and that was business. But today, collaboration is open to the world to participate in. More people, more thoughts, better ideas, and better outcomes- the future.

Not only that, with information about businesses easily accessible, there is a transparency that defeats closed source businesses. It forces businesses to be open, honest and just in the way they do business or else they risk losing business due to their dishonesty or unethical decision-making.

Businesses aren’t the only ones who understand the benefits of collaboration. Even teachers are actively using it in the classroom. In fact, the professor whose class this blog is for uses collaboration and seeks the benefits. As couples or even small groups, my classmates and I split up the readings and lead the class in discussion. Everyone is required to read and discuss when the time comes.

We gain a better understanding of the material, sometimes more insight than the material even provides, and we get to escape the hierarchal, sometimes pretentious, lectures from professors who only give one sided perspective and knowledge on a particular subject, without acknowledging all the minds around them (and BOREing us all the same!) So for this personal reason, all though is seems like the natural direction most of society is going in, I am FOR collaboration.